Pulse
by Anidori-Kiladra
Summary: “You’ll always have me, no matter what,” Padma tells Parvati, and George feels another dagger shot of pain at the thought that they have each other, they are still part of their own perfect circle, while he is alone.


Pulse

A/N: Well, here I am, writing an angsty, Fred and George, post DH oneshot. How original of me. Despite that, I would love to hear what you think about it, so review away.

xXx

Like his missing ear, only a hundred, a thousand times worse, a part of him that should be there, severed, ripped away, that makes him feel incomplete and strangely lopsided. Places, friends, even family, come and go, but always, there's always been Fred. Only not anymore.

He's gone, and no talk about "through the-bloody, George interjects to himself-veil" can help, even though he knows Harry's faced losses too, maybe even, a tiny, easily shushed part of his brain whispers, greater losses than his. But that can't be right, because what is a greater loss than one's other half?

Lee, maybe, comes closest to understanding, when he isn't wrapped up in sharing post-war euphoria with Katie. He was their best friend in school, participant in all pranks, aider and abettor, but even he never, ever broke into that sealed, complete circle of two.

"A circle has no beginning," chants Luna softly, touching his forearm with her first two fingers, as though checking for a pulse in the wrong place. And she's right, because if Fred was the beginning, then George is the end, and he should do something to stopper the well of grief inside him. But if George is the beginning and Fred was the end, then why is George still here; why does he wake in the night holding his own two fingers over that in-between place, searching for a pulse, the beat of his heart, in a place he knows they don't exist.

And he thinks that maybe he's that place. He's alive, he's here, but he doesn't exist without Fred.

They're still staying at Hogwarts in the aftermath of the battle, to help clean up. The rubble and the portraits slashed by hexes are the least of it. Far worse is the sight of McGonagall on her hands and knees, scrubbing at bloodstains that won't come out of the flagstones in the entrance hall. There are some things even magic can't take care of. And the list grows longer every day.

Like little Dennis Creevey-George can't remember how old the kid is, can't be more that fourteen or so-sobbing as his parents drag him away from his brother's body, their own faces stony and masked.

There are two ways grief can go, George has decided. It can bring people together, or it can isolate them. George isn't sure about the rest of his family, but he knows that for him, Fred's death has isolated him as nothing else could.

Because how can he be a brother when Fred is gone? A brother teases Ron about the way he holds Hermione's hand, or warns Harry that he better treat Ginny right this time, or else.

How can he be a son, who fists his hands around his mother's back and rests his chin on her hair? How can he be a friend who jokes or a prankster who always has a Puking Pastille hidden up his sleeve? How can he be any of those things, how can he be _George_, now Fred is gone?

Fred's name always came first. People always spoke of them together and Fred's name always came first. Fred and George, Gred and Forge, absolutely interchangeable, yet alarmingly different too. Fred was daring, George observant, but together they were complete, and one hell of a team. How can anyone say "George" without "Fred and" before it?

It's incomprehensible, but it's true. Truer than anything has ever been before or, George suspects, anything will ever be again.

He pulls the half-familiar hangings shut around his bed in what is now the second year Gryffindor boys dormitory, these relics of another life, a life in which he had a twin and plans and someone to share them with, and no scarred hole in the side of his head or aching hole in his heart.

The next morning he walks down the corridor past the hospital wing, taking a roundabout way to the Great Hall, so he can put off for just another few minutes what awaits him. Today, the Weasleys, along with Harry and Hermione, who are practically Weasleys themselves by now, go home. And George will have to face again the prospect of a familiar place with no familiar Fred inside of it.

As he walks along, he hears the unmistakable sound of muffled sobbing. It's a sound he hasn't heard in a while. Now, almost three weeks after the final battle, people mostly restrict their tears to their pillows and show resolute faces still etched with sadness to the world.

George slows, not wanting to intrude, as the sobbing continues.

Hr steps around the corner carefully, silently, to see Parvati Patil weeping on the plinth that once was home to a statue that is now probably only fragments of stone littered in some corridor or else swept outside, totally unrecognizable now for whatever it used to be.

Then, as he watches, the door to the hospital wing opens and Padma Patil steps out, letting it fall shut behind her as she sinks down beside her sister.

"Shh," she says, rubbing slow circles on Parvati's back as it heaves. "I'm here now."

Parvati turns and leans into her sister's shoulder. Her twin's, George remembers with a slight shock. Padma rocks Parvati in her arms and hums a tune that reminds George of windswept dirt and silver rain.

Soon, Parvati's sobs turn to hiccups and she chokes out, "Lavender," and George remembers again. Lavender, badly cursed, set upon by Fenrir Greyback, has been hanging onto life by a thread, unable to be moved to St. Mungo's because of overcrowding.

It appears that that thread has been cut, and George feels sharp pain knife through him, almost surprising, since, after all, he hardly knew Lavender, but there's just been so much loss, so much hurt, and George just wants it all to _stop_.

"Shh, I know," says Padma, ceasing her rocking and pushing Parvati away from her gently, but continuing to hold her by the shoulders. "Look at me, love."

Parvati looks, her almond brown eyes wet and shiny and tears still coursing down her cheeks.

"You'll always have me, no matter what," says Padma, and Parvati pulls her into a fierce hug, chin digging into Padma's shoulder. And George feels another dagger shot of pain at the thought that they have each other, they are still part of their own perfect circle, while he is alone.

Then Parvati's still-damp eyes meet George's, and he is ashamed to be caught staring, an intruder in her sadness, but Parvati looks thoughtful, and, breaking away from Padma's embrace, holds out her hand to him.

And George goes, and sits on the floor beside her, and she wraps her arm around his neck and pulls him closer, up onto the plinth with them, and it is crowded, and her elbow is digging into his collarbone, but it feels wonderful. George feels tears prick his eyes as two more hands rest on his shoulders. For here are people who _know_, as no one else does, what it would be like to lose a part of themselves embodied in another person, and he feels his isolation slip away.

Parvati grasps his arm with her other hand, and he can see her white-tipped fingers through tear-blurry eyes and her grip is hard, and it hurts, but he doesn't flinch away. Because there, under Parvati's fingers, he feels his pulse, a steady beat, at last.


End file.
